Partnering for growth

During the 2020/21 financial year, the City’s Investment Facilitation Unit served as a key role player in the metro’s recovery efforts, particularly through its Incentives Policy, which is designed to attract vital investment to the greater Cape Town area, as well as help prospective investors navigate the municipal processes involved in such investment.

As a direct result of the metro’s prioritisation and incentivisation of investment in the previous financial year, the City engaged with almost 250 prospective investors and saw the initiation of numerous investment projects valued at nearly R15 billion – all essentially during a global pandemic.

Supporting SMEs

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) make up over 90% of all businesses in Cape Town and account for nearly half of private-sector employment. The City has committed to creating an environment in which small businesses can grow and thrive, by facilitating business support. This includes ongoing advice and skills development, guidance on regulation compliance, and the removal of businessrelated bottlenecks. The assistance is delivered directly to SMEs, in partnership with support organisations and various business incubators.

Land use management

As a direct result of the metro’s prioritisation and incentivisation of investment in the previous financial year, the City engaged with almost 250 prospective investors and saw the initiation of numerous investment projects valued at nearly R15 billion – all essentially during a global pandemic

Expediting land development applications in support of various City strategies is enabled through ongoing improvements to the Land Use Management System. Key to this approach is reviewing and simplifying the City of Cape Town Municipal Planning By-law, 2015 (MPBL), and entrenching the City’s Development Application Management System. This ensures that both these instruments improve efficiencies in the processing of applications, thereby enabling economic growth. The MPBL has consolidated the municipal planning regulatory function and placed it under full City control, effectively giving the City executive authority over municipal planning in its area of jurisdiction. The City reviews the MPBL every year, allowing the public to comment and make suggestions on possible improvements to the by-law and its associated processes.

The Development Management Scheme (DMS) is the City’s single zoning scheme, as required by law, with the objective to control land use and regulate land use rights through effective zoning. The DMS helps direct the spatial transformation of Cape Town, as it is framed within the MSDF and the City’s economic and social development strategies.

Growth-oriented partnerships

The City partners with property developers and other stakeholders to share information and assess opportunities to help achieve its infrastructure investment vision. This provides a clear view of any planned public- and privatesector development initiatives or concerns. The partnerships also help ensure full transparency between stakeholders, and a shared development vision based on effective information flow. The City engages with representative property development bodies and other relevant stakeholders to share information on its infrastructure investment vision, initiatives and programmes, and to discuss privatesector-led developments. This helps build a common vision for development in Cape Town based on transit-oriented development (TOD) principles, and improves relations and investment decisions through increased information flow. These information-sharing engagements include a focus on investment initiatives in the spatially targeted TOD precincts making up the Catalytic Land Development Programme, and specifically also the priority precincts. Examples include the business forum and the higher education forum that have been established for Bellville, which is one of the priority precincts. These forums meet a number of times per year, offering the City a platform to share information regarding its planned initiatives in the Bellville precinct, including opportunities to develop this area into an innovation district.

Promoting Cape Town

The City’s business brand, Invest Cape Town, continues to stimulate and enable investment by ensuring that all economic role players in the region speak with one voice, campaigning for Cape Town as Africa’s hub for business ideas and innovation. In the previous financial year, Invest Cape Town built on its success from the preceding one by:

• continuing to strengthen partnerships with special-purpose vehicles (SPVs)

• supporting digital events hosted by SPVs and stakeholders

• running local and international campaigns to boost the economy and encourage investor confidence

• successfully growing its digital platforms.

In September 2020, Cape Town’s investor confidence campaign was relaunched. This collaboration between Invest Cape Town, Wesgro and the InvestSA one-stop shop was rolled out in three phases, which concluded in April 2021. The campaign aimed to boost the investment identities of both Cape Town and the Western Cape locally and abroad, and to promote the investment landscape as a compelling and lucrative one, while eliminating barriers to investment.

The overall campaign achieved 51.7 million impressions, 208 331 clicks to all websites, and an estimated 1 626 leads. Invest Cape Town itself achieved 16.1 million impressions, 55 093 clicks to its website, 405 estimated leads and 221 estimated sector brochure downloads.

Sector development

As part of its trade and investment function, the City funds and supports various SPVs to drive growth and job creation in strategic sectors of the economy. The SPVs currently supported are the Cape Information Technology Initiative (CiTi), the Cape Town Fashion Council, BlueCape, the Cape Craft and Design Institute, GreenCape, the Cape Clothing and Textile Cluster, and CapeBPO.

Other SPVs receiving City support include Wesgro, the Western Cape’s destination marketing, investment and trade promotion agency, and the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership.

Since 2011, the City has invested over R300 million in Wesgro and the various other SPVs, which have, in turn, facilitated over R32.2 billion’s worth of investment in Cape Town and created more than 46 000 direct jobs.

In FY 2020/21 alone, the SPVs collectively achieved R9.7 billion’s worth of investment, which has resulted in 10 194 direct jobs for Cape Town. This was achieved against an internal City target of R5.5 billion in investments, 4 000 jobs and 1 660 training initiatives.

This excellent achievement was facilitated by the City’s contribution of over R55 million to the SPVs in the past financial year. The industries in which Cape Town has the most pronounced job creation advantages are business process services, fishing, real estate, textiles and clothing, hotels and restaurants, and food and beverage manufacturing. While many of these were severely affected by the pandemic, they remain key focus areas for attracting investment going forward.